Andrea Cabral

The sheriff of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, says that, to keep people from returning to prison, they need vocational and educational skills and the health care that they were not getting before they were incarcerated.

In November 2002, Cabral became the first female in the commonwealth's history and also the first African-American in the county to hold the position. She is responsible for both the jail and the prison in the county – which means more than 1,000 corrections officers, investigators, educators, health care providers, caseworkers, managers and administrative staff who watch over some 2,700 offenders who are in the system on any given day.

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When Andrea J. Cabral took over the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in November 2002, it was an institution in chaos.

Cabral, a career prosecutor, was appointed by then-acting Gov. Jane Swift to complete the term of the previous sheriff, Richard Rouse, who had taken early retirement just weeks before a special commission released a report showing an agency riddled with unqualified patronage hires, guards who extorted or traded favors with inmates, sexual abuse of female inmates and beatings of men.

In an interview at the South Bay House of Correction last week, Cabral recalled that her early reform efforts had met with surprisingly little resistance. “I think the majority dealt with it very, very well,” she said, “but you always have a core group of people who are heavily invested in keeping things the way they are, either because they benefit personally or the system the way it exists just creates a higher comfort level for them to function.”

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